Transportation network companies: insurance coverage.

Senator Cabaldon, along with principal coauthors Assembly Members Berman and Wicks and several Senate and Assembly colleagues, advances a revision of transportation network company insurance that centers uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage while anchoring accountability in the companies themselves and grounding the measure in a data-driven review of risk. The core change lowers uninsured motorist and underinsured motorist coverage requirements and makes the transportation network company responsible for maintaining that coverage, while preserving a primary liability limit of one million dollars for each ride.

Under the proposal, from the moment a participating driver accepts a ride request until the passenger completes the trip, transportation network company insurance must be primary and provide one million dollars for death, personal injury, and property damage, with the option to satisfy this requirement through coverage maintained by the driver, the company, or a combination. In addition, the bill would require uninsured motorist coverage and underinsured motorist coverage in the amounts of sixty thousand dollars per person and three hundred thousand dollars per incident, with the TNC as the sole insurer obligation for this coverage. The insurer would have the duty to defend and indemnify the insured, and a TNC may satisfy its obligations through a driver policy only if that policy is specifically written to cover the driver’s use in connection with the TNC platform and verified by the company.

The bill also adds time-bound insurance and liability requirements around the period before a ride is accepted and after a ride ends, including a framework for primary and excess coverage during those windows and a provision that the insurer providing coverage under these provisions shall be the sole insurer with a defense obligation for claims arising in the covered periods. It specifies that if a driver’s personal coverage lapses, the TNC must provide the required coverage beginning with the first dollar of a claim, and it notes that the act does not limit the liability of a TNC for damages exceeding the required insurance level. The measure would require the Public Utilities Commission to verify coverage arrangements and to allow certain combinations of driver- and company-provided policies, subject to verification.

In addition to the insurance provisions, the bill establishes data- and study-focused requirements. A new provision would require the Commission and the Department of Insurance to collaborate on a study of the impacts of the uninsured and underinsured coverage requirements to inform data-driven decisions about insurance standards for TNC services, with findings due to specified legislative committees by the end of 2030. That study provision becomes inoperative on December 31, 2034, and repealed on January 1, 2035. The act would also expand the annual Commission report due by February 1, 2026 to include information on automobile accidents involving participating drivers and related uninsured/underinsured motorist claims, and, by February 1, 2027, to specify the average rider fare paid (excluding tips, tolls, and taxes) during three defined periods, with data aggregated across all TNCs and maintained with confidentiality.

The measure is conditioned on the enactment and effective date of a companion reform, making its operative provisions contingent on that other measure taking effect by early 2026. The accompanying legislative history also reflects an intent that any savings realized from reduced insurance expenditures be reinvested into the economic stability and welfare of drivers and riders, as stated by the bill’s authors; the proposal sits within the broader framework of Public Utilities Commission oversight of transportation network companies and related policy considerations.